We’re halfway through the project at the moment - it started in September 2004, and will be going on till summer 2005.

There are a number of enclosures in the parish that have been picked up by aerial photography, and we’re doing excavations on those. We did the first stage in September to find out more, and that will give us a signpost where to concentrate our efforts on the second stage which will be at the end of April.

There are two large marks right round the field which appear to be some sort of early settlement, so they opened up a number of trenches to see what sort of evidence there was. We got quite a bit out of that, some finds and a general indication that it’s actually an Iron Age settlement, which means it’s taking Bigbury back two thousand years earlier than what we knew before.

Next time, we’ll concentrate on the places where there have been most finds and more queries, which will give us more detail. It looks as though it was a much wider than local settlement, so we want to know whether - and what - they might have traded.

We’re learning as we go along. I’ve always done a lot of research focusing on the last 250 years, where there is written evidence and documents, but none of us knew anything about what happened here before Doomsday, and we’re learning fast. Last night for example, we had someone come and talk to us about the geology of the area, which all helps us to understand what’s what, and it’s all linked in with our desire to go back further in time, that has taken us down all sorts of paths.

It now appears quite likely that the name of the cliff top site where we are excavating gave its name in later centuries to the whole of the parish - a connection not previously recognised. It looks as though people lived on the cliff in the Iron Age, and then later moved about a mile inland out of sight. A distinctive local feature has been identified in that all the settlements were on hill tops. This is due to the geology of the area causing springs of water to rise on the hills rather than in the valleys as is usually the case.